Murder Most Royal

I assumed it was to do with the breakout of the boar because there had been the horrible business with Mrs Fisher’s cockapoo.’

‘Goodness!’ the Queen said. ‘What happened?’

At which point Astrid did something none of them expected. Her eyes welled up and she cried ugly tears that dislodged her mascara, unable to help herself.

‘I . . . I’m s-sorry!’ she gasped. ‘I don’t know what I’m d-doing!’ She tried to cover her wet cheeks with the back of a clenched hand. A footman stepped forward with a napkin for her to use as a handkerchief, but she shook her head.

‘I’ll be fine.’ She took a deep breath, managed a weak, shaky smile and glanced across at the nearest large object, which was a screen of Venetian fans. ‘Those are lovely. Do you collect them? Are they eighteenth-century?’

At that moment, the Queen was reminded sharply of Astrid’s mother, Moira, who had the same disconcerting core of steel. Moira had always dealt with her late husband’s famous drinking habit by pretending it didn’t exist. She had clearly brought up her daughter in a similar vein.

But the Queen could see that behind the carefully filled façade, poor Astrid was devastated. She was clearly devoted to Ned, and the life they had planned together. She would have made a good match for him, despite the age gap. Perhaps, under her influence, they might even have found their way into Sandringham life again. Another party organised by Ned St Cyr would have been quite something.

She didn’t share any of these reflections with Astrid.

They would hardly have been helpful. But she offered to ask the chef to share the lavender shortbread recipe with her, and assured her that they were very much looking forward to sampling the jam.

Sir Simon and Rozie were both working late. Last January, Rozie remembered, he had tended to switch off his monitor at about 5 p.m. before calling his wife in London for a chat, making the most of the winter holiday lull before everything ramped up again in February. This year, Lady Holcroft was still in Scotland, but that didn’t explain the worried look on the private secretary’s face and the large pile of reading material he was working his way through.

‘Anything interesting?’ she asked, poking her head around his door.

‘Not unless you find the supplementary information to the Government’s appeal to the Supreme Court against R. Miller versus the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union interesting,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. He looked up.